Yep. It’s a full-on ‘Ellipsis Syndrome’ of some sort that I simply have no control over. It is my absolute favorite punctuation in the whole wide world. I was looking back over some of my old blog posts, and they have literally been invaded by ellipsi (which I am just guessing is the plural, cause it just makes sense, ya know)

Maybe my crib sheets were polka dotted? Perhaps I had too many cameras flash in my eyes as a child? Whatever the reason, I cannot go more than two paragraphs without interjecting those cute little pinpoints.

So, I am embracing my inner dot fetish and have brushed up on some fun facts about the ellipsis, care of Wikipedia:

The triple-dot punctuation mark is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis, periods of ellipsis, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot [and I thought dot-dot-dot was just our little ‘pet name’ secret]

An ellipsis at the end of the sentence that ends with a period (or such a period followed by an ellipsis) appears as four dots…. [boy have I ever been breaking that rule…I thought the four-dotters were just trying to prove they were better than everyone]

In legal writing in the United States, Rule 5.3 in the Bluebook citation guide governs the use of ellipses and requires a space before the first dot and between the two subsequent dots. [I have also not been nearly anal enough about my dots]

In Japanese manga, the ellipsis by itself represents speechlessness, or a "pregnant pause." [seriously, who knew my little friends could express so much raw emotion?? and apparently they can even knock people up too!!]

The diagonal and vertical forms of the ellipsis are particularly useful for showing missing terms in matrices, such as the size-n identity matrix [I have no clue what that means, but if it trying to say that people who use the ellipsis also like the Matrix movie, then that is just like, too freakily coincidental!!!]

In some programming languages (including Perl, Ruby, and Pascal), a shortened two-dot ellipsis is used to represent a range of values given two endpoints [techies can be such slackers]

I also discovered tonight that Facebook has a group of fellow ellipsis fans. No, seriously. It is called “Obessesed with the ellipsis…that’s right I am…” Isn’t that just the most awesome thing?? The group even has 71 members. Well, ok, 72 now.

It will be good to have some support. And someone to talk to when I accidentally impregnate my pauses…

Interesting… I tend to over use and abuse this punctuation myself. It’s like Elaine in Seinfeld using the exclamation mark at the end of every sentence!!! Remember that episode?!!! As always, great humor in every post!

HomeschoolOnline – The “dot,dot,dot” thing in Mamma Mia was simply brilliant!! And I’m with you on the Academy Awards…not a clue this year.

SpinDiva – It just made me smile to see you stop by!! Not sure how, but I somehow missed that episode of Seinfeld. And I call myself a Gen-X’er! I’ll find it somewhere and catch up ASAP! (Did you notice all the exclamation points??)